


Money Might Talk but a Picture is Forever

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Banter, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 03:51:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16318610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Misty gets Ward's help with a case. Kinda flirty, could be pre-relationship, but basically gen.





	Money Might Talk but a Picture is Forever

There was a time in her life (actually, pretty much her entire life) when Misty would have laughed and laughed if anyone had suggested that one New Year's Eve, she would've sashayed into a corporate party at the top of a downtown office tower on the arm of a billionaire. And yet, here she was.

They still would've gotten a few of the details wrong, though.

"Do you always strong-arm your dates into the ballroom as if you're pushing them into the back of a squad car?"

"I'm on _your_ arm," Misty pointed out, curling her bionic hand more snugly around his tuxedo-clad arm -- an arm she could have broken without exerting herself. "And you keep stopping."

"I'm being polite," Ward murmured out of the corner of his mouth, nearly breaking stride as she propelled him another step or two forward. "The point of being here is to schmooze and be seen -- good evening, Mrs. Yee, Freddie -- _ow,_ Jesus, what are you doing?"

"I needed to get a better look at the man by the buffet, the one in blue leaning on the cane."

"That's Henry Garland, noted philanthropist and very generous donor to the symphony and children's causes," Ward muttered. "I don't think he's the head of a ring of snatch-and-grab jewel thieves. Besides, isn't your guy in his thirties?"

"Yes, and he's apparently damned good at disguise. It took us months to even figure out the guy we kept picking up on security cameras was the same dude."

"Yeah, well, I've been shaking Henry Garland's hand at these parties since I had to look _up_ at him." Ward glanced, again, at the stoop-shouldered man by the buffet, shrunken with age and infirmity. "So yeah, that's Henry. Any other elderly social fixtures you want to finger as your basic criminal type? That's Loretta Kasparova over there, she might be about to run her wheelchair right through the middle of the -- _ow_ , I need that foot."

"I knew I should've asked Danny to be my date tonight. Where is the other half of team Rand-Meachum, anyway?"

"No idea, but knowing my brother, he's probably either running around on the rooftops dressed like an idiot or volunteering in the soup line at a shelter for homeless orphan kittens. I, on the other hand, cut a few generous checks of a million or two to an assortment of worthy charities around the city, like a sensible person."

"You're a regular humanitarian, Meachum."

"So the tabloids say." He took her bionic hand, startling her. "You know what'd give you a good vantage point for surveying this entire ballroom without looking out of place? That waltz they just struck up."

She couldn't think of any good reason not to, so she laced her metal fingers through his. "Lead on."

He took the lead with a quick, sudden grin, sweeping her into the first measure. She didn't quite want to admit that her entire knowledge of waltzing was based on Youtube videos and a brief dance lesson with her cousin when she was fifteen, but she was a quick study and Ward was, unexpectedly, a good teacher, recognizing her inexperience and guiding her through the moves.

Misty wasn't generally self-conscious about her arm, so even she couldn't quite say why she'd opted tonight for a long-sleeved red dress that covered her to the wrists, rather than the glittering blue dress with its thin straps that she'd once worn to flirt with Luke Cage. It just didn't feel right, was the best she could come up with. It wasn't that she felt the need to hide the arm. It was just that, in this room full of people who made more in a day of stock trading than she'd made in her whole life, she felt like she needed every edge that she could get, rather than putting her bionic arm on display to a room full of vultures.

Vultures with cameras. The two of them were getting more than a little attention from the paparazzi as they spun around the ballroom.

"You know," Ward murmured, "if you don't want to draw attention, you couldn't have picked a worse dance partner. It'll be splashed all over the tabloids in the morning -- who is the mystery woman in red dancing with New York's most eligible bachelor?"

"New York's most modest bachelor too, I see."

His smile had a dark, sharp edge. "Yes, well, Time Magazine doesn't know I'm a depressed, borderline psychotic mess, do they?"

"Knock off the pity party," she told him, delivering him a smart tap on the wrist with her bionic hand that made him jump -- and then kept her hand there. His annoyed look turned curious. "Three o'clock, next to the potted palm. _That's_ my guy, right there."

"The one who looks like Mister Rogers?" Skepticism was woven throughout Ward's tone.

"It's the way he's standing." She kept a smile on her face and spoke through it. "Hard to change that, and _keep_ it when you're distracted. He's good, but even the best don't think of everything."

"So what are you planning to do?" Ward asked, and then sighed when her fierce grin didn't waver. "You're going to arrest him in the middle of a Rand corporate function, aren't you. Why do I ask."

"Oh, don't complain," she told him. "It'll give the reporters something to focus on other than you."

*

She gave them something to focus on, all right, especially when she ended up tackling her target into the middle of the buffet's chocolate fountain. The pitch-perfect final touch to the picture they made on the front page of the _Bulletin_ was the string of pearls slipping out of his sleeve, secreted there earlier in the evening after he'd lifted it from one of the other patrons at the gala.

"So the way I heard it, you yelled, 'Stop, asshole, it's the fucking police!' and took a swan dive into the middle of the chocolate fountain," Colleen remarked, sitting on the edge of Misty's desk in the precinct and swinging her leg cheerfully while she admired the photo. "The papers got most of that, but they left out the cursing."

"Have you been talking to Ward?"

"No, I've been talking to Danny, who's been talking to Ward. Danny says he's going to have to start going to Rand's corporate functions if they're all going to be like this. He said that Ward said he's not sure whether to thank you or sue you."

Misty snorted. "As if His Most Eligible-ness doesn't owe me one for saving his company from a PR black eye after a dozen of those blue-haired high rollers find out they're missing their diamond necklaces and Rolexes. If this dude was gonna level up from smash-and-grabs in Harlem, he sure did it in a major way."

"For all the good it did him." Colleen flipped open the paper to the inside page. "Oh, here's the _real_ money shot, though."

Misty looked over, with a sigh, at the small black-and-white photo of herself splashed in melted chocolate, her dress half torn off, with Ward gallantly draping his jacket over her shoulders. It wasn't like she hadn't already seen it half a dozen times taped up around the precinct (every time she tore one down, another turned up), although the bigger color picture of her looking like she was a contestant in a chocolate mud-wrestling competition had been the clear pinup winner.

"They left out the part where he was telling me I needed to stop dripping expensive imported cacao on the carpet. And next time they need someone to go undercover at a shindig like this, I am _delegating_ that shit."

Colleen laughed. "Oh, you're telling me it wasn't just a _little_ bit fun?"

"Punching our jewel thief in the face _was_ kinda fun," Misty said, with pleasant reflection.

A passing detective in the hallway paused to call through her office door, "Hey, Captain, you feeling a little sweeter this morning?"

"Hey, MacNamara, how would you like to work that case with the guy leaving bags of flaming dog poop on doorsteps over on 129th?"

The detective withdrew with a laugh. Colleen slid off the desk. "I gotta run. You aren't the only one who's working on New Years; the center is open too." She paused and turned around. "So hey, I never got around to what I actually wanted to ask. Danny and I are having what I guess you'd call a family dinner at the dojo tonight. Ward's going to be there, and Claire. Maybe Luke. You're welcome to come, if you'd like."

"I'll have to see how the caseload stacks up," Misty hedged.

"Bring a dessert!" Colleen declared cheerfully as she left, and then called back through the door, "And I don't mean one you're wearing!"

"You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"What are friends for?" Colleen's voice trailed down the hall.

Misty shook her head with a smile and laid the paper aside, folded open to the photo of herself with a billionaire's jacket draped over her shoulders. She _did_ have to take the jacket back, after all -- once she got the chocolate stains off.


End file.
